Mark’s post below notes, quite rightly, that Walmart is a Janus-faced problem for liberals. On the one hand, it helps the people we (at least me) care most about as consumers, but may (I think this is more complicated) hurt them as workers. Mark suggests that liberals need to keep hammering Walmart on their own internal policies. I think that’s true where unionization is concerned, although this may be a pipe dream, given how deeply complete managerial autonomy is in the Walmart model. But I’m actually not quite as bothered with Walmart’s relatively low wages ane meager benefits, in and of themselves. Walmart works disproportionately in lower-income areas, so we should expect their wages to be lower, and I do think there’s an argument that, because the company hires so much through the ranks, that it is actually a force for good social mobility-wise.
What really bothers me about Walmart is what Mark hints at, which is its relative non-support for broad egalitarian policies that would arguably be in its own interest. This is a question that a fantastic graduate student at Yale, Nicole Kazee, has been looking at what she calls “Walmart welfare”. Employers like Walmart would/do actually benefit disproportionately from welfare state policies like universal health care, wage subsidies (like EITC), child care, education and literacy programs, etc. (as we all know, Walmart is already relying considerably on Medicaid) To the degree that things like this are paid out of progressive income taxes, they would actually have very little impact on Walmart’s bottom line (although they would impact its owners) while providing a substantial subsidy to their cost of doing business.
So, I’m not sure how much energy I would actually devote to beating up Walmart on things it can only do relatively little on without drastically changing its business model. If I were advising liberal strategists, I would encourage them to think of Walmart as a potential ally as a matter of cold hard self-interest, not simply because they’d like to do something to get liberals off their backs (which will inevitably only lead to symbolic action). I would try to put together Walmart executives with the better, more creative liberal social policy folks to talk about welfare state expansions and how they might be designed so as to attract the support of Walmart. Esp. with a changed Congress coming up, who says Walmart wouldn’t be interested in listening?
> but may (I think this is more
> complicated) hurt them as workers.
Up until 1990 I would have agreed with you that Wal-mart was an ambigious situation. They did clearly contribute to the final destruction of small-town and small-city socioeconomic cohesion, but that was dying anyway. And they did bring services and prices to semi-rural US that were not available before (as you can see by traveling in rural Arkansas).
Up to 1990, that is, when the stock in the typical Wal-Mart store was a reasonable balance of 60-70% "made in USA" and 30-40% "made elsewhere". Specialization, comparative advantage, friendly global trade, and all that.
After 1990 however Wal-Mart changed. It developed very powerful supply-chain management processes, then used them to beat its suppliers bloodly. Literally bloody in many cases. The suppliers might have had some fat to cut, but by 1995 they were forced to start seeking the lowest level. Which meant offshoring perfectly good US jobs so that they could manufacture crap that just met the absolute minimum Wal-Mart specification while paying their (or really, their outsourcers') workers dimes per day in appalling conditions (please don't tell me this isn't true as I have seen it happen personally).
Today 90% or more of Wal-Mart's stock is made outside the US. I just don't see how this is good for our nation in the long run or even the short run. The US no longer has the advantage of superior manufacturing base, more oil, more natural resources, better educated population, etc that it had in the 1940-1980 time frame. It just doesn't. We could have kept ourselves going on a self-sustaining basis for a long time, but Wal-Mart forced us to hollow out that dearly bought economic advantage and ship it to China and India. Again, I just don't see how this can possibly end up well for us in, say, 2020.
Cranky
Wal-Mart, IIRC, does support a higher minimum wage.
> After all, under the current system,
> many of Wal-Mart's competitors are
> spending money on employee health
> plans that Wal-Mart isn't. Under
> universal health coverage, the
> competitors wouldn't have that
> expense, and Wal-Mart would lose that advantage.
Well, there is also the need to keep employees below the top 3% quaking in fear their entire lives ala The Gilded Age, but we aren't allowed to talk about that in the modern US political economy ;-(
Cranky
Isn't the question of whether universal health care would help Wal-Mart more complicated? After all, under the current system, many of Wal-Mart's competitors are spending money on employee health plans that Wal-Mart isn't. Under universal health coverage, the competitors wouldn't have that expense, and Wal-Mart would lose that advantage.